


your birth is just a part of your death

by somethingdifferent



Category: Masters of Sex, Never Let Me Go - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Clones, F/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-10 23:19:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2044005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>You hear this so often, from everyone, from everywhere. I just wanted something nice, I just wanted something to call my own, I just wanted you to suffer, I just wanted you to die.</em>
</p>
<p>[bill/virginia; the real life 'never let me go' au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	your birth is just a part of your death

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stop thinking about Bill/Virginia AUs, especially fusions with Kazuo Ishiguro's novels (mostly this, and The Remains of the Day; seriously, read it and weep). Reading Never Let Me Go is not necessary for understanding this fic, but it is certainly recommended for some of the more obscure references. I realize this pales in comparison to the original, but hey, we do our best. Of course, this is a dramatically alternate universe, so everyone's probably a little out of character, but I hope you guys will forgive me.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

_ your body is a mess sometimes _  
_ your brain is just a part of your head _  
_ it really is a mess sometimes _  
_ your head is just a part of the rest _

Sometime, DIIV

 

_ I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. _

Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro

 

 

 

 

 

Your name is Virginia J. This is a fact.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"Bill," you say, but he doesn't answer. His eyes are wide, focused. They keep moving, roaming around the room, over your face, like he's trying to memorize it, like it's something he might like to study. He can't say anything to you. If he were to open his mouth now, you know he would be screaming.

"I love you," you say.

(This, when he cannot respond, is the only time you ever will tell him. This is on purpose.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

Other things, also facts:

you are twenty-seven years old;

you are a carer, and you're good at it;

you have received your first notice for your first donation;

you are going to die.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Of the three of you - the last remnants of Hailsham - Libby is the first to complete. You are only her carer for the last two months before her donation, the donation that will ultimately kill her (completing, the nurses call it, the teachers call it, hell, Libby calls it, but you and Bill have never been so naive; dying is dying is dying, and you are dying, same as the rest of them).

So she completes on the operating table, as her liver is pulled from her body, too soon even for your kind, twenty-three and dead from only her second donation. 

It makes you angrier than it should. You had thought her stronger than that.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"You know each other?" a waitress asks the three of you in Norfolk. You're there, on your trip from the Cottages, your first glimpse of the outside world. It was your idea, this first adventure into adulthood. Into the _real world_.

"You know each other?" a waitress asks, and you smile, say, "We grew up together."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

The _real world_ is a vague and nebulous concept that all of you have known about from the first time you can speak. The real world includes wonders such as television shows, schools you attend in the daytime only, roommates sharing the rent, going to museums, and being on the receiving end of a donation.

The real world, you think sometimes. Even then you must have known. You _must_ have.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

You and Bill were friends first. You could hardly imagine it now, but he used to throw fits, have tantrums, get into fights and end up the winner of them. He was tough, mean, wildly angry. He claims later it's because he always knew, even when he didn't know he knew, but you think it's something that was already there. Later, he will look for his Possibles in newspaper obituaries, the ones with the pictures, and always the ones who die violently. But this is later.

Bill is fighting a boy twice his size, and winning, when someone makes the mistake of calling his name. He turns his head, looking for the source, when the other boy manages to land a blow, knocking him to the ground.

You're off and running before you know it.

"That wasn't fair," you say to the other boy, Ethan, even as he smiles at you. "That wasn't fair."

You skirt around him, ignoring the mud tracking onto your nice shoes, and kneel beside Bill, watching to see if he can stand.

"I'm fine," he tells you, sniffling.

"Don't be stupid," you reply.

(Later, he will tell you this is when he first began to like you. But this is later.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

So you find Libby again. You become her carer, and the two of you reminisce about the good old days.

"Have you seen him? Since the Cottages?" She doesn't need to say who she is talking about.

You shake your head. "Have you?"

"No. But I know where he is. If you want to."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"I'm sorry," Libby tells you. She's crying. "I just wanted to be happy."

You hear this so often, from everyone, from everywhere. I just wanted something nice, I just wanted something to call my own, I just wanted you to suffer, I just wanted you to die.

"It should have been you. I always knew that. How could I not?"

(And then, later: Libby dying on an operating table. "I'm sorry," a nurse says. I just wanted her liver, she does not say.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

When you're children, Bill gets into fights, but this ends after a while, as most things do. Miss Lillian speaks with him about it, and for some reason he calms, gets deathly calm, never raises his voice and never says what he feels.

"You have been conceived, born, and raised for a specific purpose," Miss Lillian tells your class. This is when you are twelve. "When you are older, you will begin to donate your vital organs. Around the third or fourth donation, you will complete. You have to know this. You _have_ to."

Miss Lillian leaves Hailsham shortly after that.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Bill and Libby start dating (if it can be called such a thing, holding hands under their desks, kissing behind the pond, fucking in the quiet and the dark at the Cottages after they think everyone has fallen asleep) when you are fourteen. Libby is happy about it, unbearably happy, sickeningly happy, for getting Bill M. as a boyfriend. After the fights end, the tantrums and screaming over nothing end, Bill becomes something of a ladies' man. Strong, brisk, to-the-point. It's attractive, in an odd way, to a lot of girls.

When it's the two of you, you and Bill together (not _together_ ) he never mentions her. For as long as the three of you are in school, when it's just you and Bill, he never mentions her name.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"They're killing us," Bill says. "They're killing us so they can live, and we can't do anything about it."

You have a pornographic magazine open on the table in front of you; he, the obituary section of the newspaper. You do this together, you and Bill, looking for your Possibles. It's not something said aloud, but you both know.

"I know," you say.

"Shouldn't we do something?" he asks. You don't need to respond to this. He can always come to the right answer on his own.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

You actually like Libby. When it's just the two of you, you have things to talk about. You like the same reruns they play on the TV in the Cottages, you have the same opinions on the teachers you had at Hailsham, you've read the same books. And it's fine, so the two of you are always fine.

(There is, though, the thing you never talk about. By the time you're grown, when you're her carer and she's getting closer and closer to her second donation - her _last_ donation - it's grown like a tumor between the two of you, and it's all either of you can think of.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"Why wasn't it you?" she asks once. "It was always so obvious that it should have been you and him. All you had to do was - "

"It just never quite panned out," you interrupt. "You were together at Hailsham, all during the Cottages. You never split up. Then I left. That's just the way it worked out."

Libby smiles, but it's empty. "I suppose it is."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"Find him," Libby says to you. "Please." And: "I'm sorry, I just wanted to be happy."

You weren't though, you do not say. He never made you happy.

(This is the last conversation you will ever have with Libby. Kiss her on the forehead. Tell her she'll be alright, tell her you love her, and watch them take her away.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

It takes you two minutes to work up the nerve to knock.

He's laying down on the cot, but he sits up when he sees you in the doorway.

"Virginia," he says. His voice is deeper than you had remembered. And then, again, like a revelation: "Gini."

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Once, at the Cottages, you and Bill have sex. It's on the floor of the empty barn no one goes into except to look at porno magazines, and you get hay in your dark hair.

"Gini," he says, like it's a curse. "Virginia."

(He doesn't kiss you. Not once.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"You could try to get a deferral," you tell him, even as you know it's too late. He's just finished his third donation. "They always said, about Hailsham students - "

But he's already shaking his head.

"Gini," he says, but the word sticks and he has to clear his throat. "It's alright."

It isn't, but you nod anyway.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

After it's over, when the two of you are naked and woven together on the unforgiving floor of the empty, empty barn, he holds your face in his hands. You're reminded, suddenly, of when you first spoke, how hard and big his hands had looked with the muscles jumping and knuckles bleeding. He's being careful with you, like you're a piece of porcelain. You've never seem him so gentle.

He runs his thumb under your eye, wiping away a stray tear. It's funny, you think absently, you hadn't realize you were crying.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

You go back to Norfolk. One last trip, you tell him with a smile on your face. It'll be fun.

And it is. You go back to the old diner, ignoring the stares you get for Bill's weakened state. At this point, people can usually tell you apart from real people. As they get stronger, you decay.

It's fine, until that night, when Bill gets into a fight. You never find out over what. Only that he throws the first punch, misses, and gets his ass kicked.

Outside, on the ground, he curls up against the alley wall.

"I just wanted - " he starts, stops.

You take his hand. "I know," you say.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

Being his carer is almost like being back at Hailsham, back at the Cottages, with the exception that you and Bill start having sex regularly. In the beginning, it's like you're a real couple, you visiting him at the center and bringing him trinkets from shops you go to sometimes. When you're too delicate with him, he growls, flips you on your back, and you laugh. When he glares at the nurses, you laugh. When he smiles at you, and it's always only you, you smile in return.

For a while - and hasn't it always been like this? - you can forget what you are.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

You drive him back from Norfolk.

"It was nice," you're saying, trying to fill the car up with conversation. The quiet moments have a tendency to make you feel heavier than before, so you do not tolerate quiet moments. "Wasn't it nice?"

"Pull over."

"What?"

"I said pull over."

You stop the car on the shoulder of the road, kill the engine so everything up ahead is empty and dark, and Bill gets out of the car. You can hear him walking up the road a little bit, and you wait.

When you hear the first scream, it's only instinct that you should run after him (you always have).

He's ten feet out from the car, staring at nothing, and screaming bloody murder. When you wrap your arms around him, he struggles to pull them off, but eventually gives up, allowing you to hold him as he shouts himself hoarse and bone-tired, sinks to the ground and pulls you with him.

"Bill," you say, with your arms around him. He's not crying, but his _eyes_ \- "Bill, look at me."

Eventually, his eyes focus, light on you. You run your fingers into his hair, careful, gentle. Like he was once with you.

"Virginia," he says. "I'm tired. I'm so tired."

"I'm going to take care of you." Your legs are intertwined where you have fallen with him to the ground. "I promise."

(This is the first time the two of you ever kiss, and you wish - god - you wish it was different somehow. You wish the two of you were different.)

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

"Will you be here?" he asks you. His grip on your hand is so tight it hurts. "When I wake up?"

"Yes, I'll be right here."

You're there, when he wakes up, but he can't speak to you, he can barely even see you. He's folded in half on his side, and you know if he could speak he'd say it hurts, it _hurts_ , Virginia, like a child again, and the two of you are children again, you holding his hand and knowing he won't be able to reply when you say that you love him.

He nods, and you can see him struggling not to cry out as he opens his mouth.

"Virginia," he forces out, before he closes it tight like an animal-trap.

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

You receive your own first notice for donation a week after Bill completes (you can't bring yourself to call it death, not with him). You go back to Norfolk, that little diner that the three of you, the two of you, the one of you ate at. You order french fries and eat them alone. You drive back, watching the road pass underneath the wheels of the car.

Like every trip you have ever taken, it ends all too soon.

 

 

 

 


End file.
